Sunny days

It is odd how the weather can affect our mood - when I am in the deep throes of depression a sunny day can seem like an insult - my condition seems to demand a metonymy of the the weather. Equally when I am happy those leaden grey February afternoons seem to reach into my very being and drag me down. When I am depressed however, those same grey afternoons seem apposite and give me a gentle pleasure in the misery.

It is said that we all remember our childhood as a time of sunshine, a time when the seasons played their parts accurately and there was snow on the ground every Christmas and that the greenwood laughed from May to September. Not so easy if you grew up, as I did, in a tropical climate. My youth is certainly a reflection of sunlight, that or the endless rain of the monsoon but an Indian childhood does not lend itself so willingly to such halcyon nostalgia.

I do have time memories where the weather seems to fit the scene; Kalimpong for example was prone to fog and yet I remember none - a less happy holiday was spent in Darjeeling and that I remember as being dank and dingy - riding out to see the snows int the early morning and barely being able to see the rump of the horse in front.

I know it never rained in Puri - just endless days of sunshine and starlit nights, the roar of the breakers providing the lullaby that sent us to sleep. And yet it must have done because I remember grey days when we went to Konarak because it was not a good day for the beach. Once we took a picnic to the beach a Konarak and buried the beer at the water's edge so it would be cold after we had swum. Well - swimming was impossible, if Puri presented a challenge the undertow at Konarak was terrifying. We retreated to the sand and started to dig for the beer, and dug, and dug. The shift in the undertow had carried our beer from below the sand and taken it away as a libation for the Sun God and his Chariot.
Luckily one of the children who had appeared from nowhere shinned up a tree and cut us down dabs which we drank in grateful gulps.

My memory of home is always the cold weather - like a perfect English summer day, warm but not too hot, needing a cardigan at night or the drenching refreshment of the monsoon and the joy of the rain. So really I suppose ,just like everyone else, my another country has its own perfect weather.

Rekindling?

It is hard at think of what to say - the new meds seem to taken away the angst that drove much of the blogging. Not that I'm complaining - it is lovely to feel levelheaded for once, but that anguish and loneliness gave me an edge when I wrote. I know that for some of you that made uncomfortable reading and I bless you for sticking with it.

Found an old boyfriend yesterday, Phil, and wrote to Gail to tell her - I said I wasn't sure I should have contacted him and she said figure out why - well, I suppose he was always a grown up fully reciprocating relationship and I tend to head for the hills when those come along. And I did with Phil - went home to India but you see he didn't try to make me stay.

We've met up a few times since then - the last time I saw him I wasn't very nice to him and I felt awful afterwards and then two days ago on one of my sporadic bear hunts I found him. He phoned last night and we talked for an hour! Oddly it felt very comfortable even if he does support Man U.

Don't worry this not going to be crazed Internet stalker story or even a love story - just another good friend refound and this time treated with a little more care.

Talking of bunny boiling  - recipes for the baba blog please - so far I have creme caramel and blueberry pancakes - there must be more. I know Sonny Puri had fabulous scrambled eggs with chili and onion and tomato and I remember toast and jam after the horses had worked at Tolly in the early morning sun, with Bob Wright doing the Amrita crossword (that came from the Daily Telegraph). I have him to thank for my enduring enjoyment of crosswords. Breakfast in Kalimpong was porridge - lumpy and not very nice but made better with Auntie Annie's brandy honey: she used to keep a honeycomb in an old brandy bottle with a few drops left in the bottom - the best honey you could imagine even if you did slur your words a bit and felt a little woozy.

So you see there are stories there - please share. xxx

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Fires

It is so weird how the mind works - you are just chatting to someone (in this instance, me to Peter) and suddenly a random remark evokes a rush of memories. As we chatted about gilets, red boots and Land's End Clothing he said something that reminded me of the mountains and Kalimpong. Fires in bedrooms. You see we always had a fire in the bedrooms in the mountains so one slept with the gentle glow of embers, the scent of pine resin and gentle crackling of the wood as the fire slowly burned through the night.

And then the memories came flooding back, whisky and brandy bottles filled with hot water, snuggled into a crocheted cosy and pushed down so the bed was warm. Kancha bringing up pails of boiling water to fill the tin bath so we bathed in the morning in a bath, that had probably been to Gyantse and back in its lifetime, in front of a newly rekindled fire.

This may sound as if I have confused my memories with those of someone older and from another time but I promise this is true. At 4500 feet Kalimpong got cold at night. As a small child I would be tucked into bed, kissed and left to drowse in the firelight as downstairs I could hear the chatter and laughter that now seem such a hallmark of my childhood. As it got later sometimes the sounds got louder, the laughter more manic and Auntie Annie could be heard singing some ditty from the music halls of her youth. If I judged it correctly I could then creep down, hide under a table and watch entranced as the dancing started.

If you have never seen Nepalese dancing it is hard to imagine, it is both graceful and life enhancing: the beat of the tabla and the sweet sound of a flute join the voices as they sing of the love of a boy for a girl, of how the girl invites and then repels. The dancer or dancers reenact the song with the gentlest of hand gestures, use of the eyes and a constant circling and twirling as the story reaches it end. Then suddenly the mood would change, the drum was beaten faster, handkerchiefs pulled out and the men using the drum and our clapping as rhythm performed fast and furious gymnastics to the song Nainitala - Desmond excelled at this and the boys who sang always made him dance this at least once. I would get too carried away and clap loudly from my hiding place, get caught and sent back to bed.

One night Auntie Annie called us all out to the porch - once a year a flower bloomed and it was this night. We looked in awe at the purple blossom and then out across the valley to the far away snows, the spirit lights and above a huge and pendulous moon hanging in a sky studded with stars so close you could touch them if you stretched.

All this from one comment about having a fire in one's bedroom. That Marcel Proust knew a thing or two.

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Too much and too much agaain

Do you ever have that feeling when there is so much to say that you clam up completely because it all seems impossible to get out. Sometimes writing this is a bit like that - I go through my day thinking, oh that would be good, or remembering something and thinking that should go in. Then I open up the blessed Mac and all those thoughts elude me.

I've now got three half finished blogs in edit mode - either not good enough or simply rambles without any point or real meaning to them, Two of them are, I think fixable and you may see them soon.

Most of you know by now that this is the skeletal embryo of a book - one that moves between now and then so that the tension inherent in the now informs the pathos and nostalgia of the then. Darling Dubby emailed this morning and said, "At last my Joanna begins to bud;" and oddly enough I think I do.

When I was small the aunties, along with the Kalimpong Homes, organised a dance festival in the gardens of the homes - they were very keen that the Tibetan children placed at the strict Presbyterian mercy  of Dr. Graham's inheritors  might forget their heritage. The children all performed charming Tibetan folk dances waving their overlong pink sleeves rhythmically with their singing and gentle body movement.

There was sudden pandemonium as down the hillside came a procession of horsemen, wild Khampas all, though dispossessed of home and their culture - the procession shone a light into a time gone be. The King of LIng, for it  was he leading was greeted most reverently with white scarves and led to the VIP seats at the front.

His arrival was for the monks from the gompa to start. All the dancers were masked, masks made with reverence over the centuries to the same pattern and each dancer became more that a man as he danced. There was the story of Guru Rinpoche fighting the the black hats and their tantric shamanisn, the use of the animals to prove his enlightenment.

Those monks that were the deer leapt and twirled in a way that would have made Nijinsky weep with envy. And then, just as we all needed a break - the clowns with their red devil faces would come out and taunt the pretty girls, who gave back what they got with interest. It was joyous and a glimpse into another world and time   that was fast disappearing.

Some five years my parents and I were invited to the Setchu dances in Pairo, Bhutan. No fresh faced children here - this was one of the great Bhutanese lamaseries and this year was more special than most for a giant thanka(religious painting on cloth), was to be hung from the roof of the gompa. There were only four such thankas in existence: one in Lhasa, one in Gyantse, one in Leh and this one in Pario and thus this was a day of high religion and joy to the people of the Paro valley.

We sat behind a carved wooden screen with the Queen, Ashi Kesang, her two daughters, the Crown Prince and his two tutors, Major Cann and Michael Airies (who later became fellow of Oriental Studies at Oxford and married Aang San Syu Ke. Plus the usual rat tag mob of Desmond, Mum, my sister, me, the ubiquitous Tibetan entourage and the (assumedly CIA) American Consul and his wife and daughter. One the first day the Thanka was lowered and it was huge, depicting the great wheel with the Buddha in the centre. Pilgrims had come from all over Bhutan to see it and help toward their enlightenment.

The dances were, if anything even more stunning - higher leaps performed in slow motion with only the discordant note of cymbals and drums played to keep away the evil spirits. This seemed to me to be magic that I was watching not men and I was transported to another world, time place. Whatever fascination I have with religion now comes from those days of watching not just the lamas dancing but the reverent people, young and old to whom it meant so much to see all of this as if the gods themselves danced before them.

I was very, very  privileged.

PS At this point I would love to show you photographs and videos of mine but my sister has custody and those of you who follow me regularly know that means no chance. So apart from the picture of me everything else is courtesy of Google image search.

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My Mother the Spy

Me and Mum

There are many very normal and average appearing people who actually are spies. Think of Smiley. There are of course those who do indeed perpetuate the stereotype. My mother fell into neither category and yet was viewed with deep suspicion for three or four years by the Indian Government as a spy. Our phones were tapped and she was shadowed all over Calcutta.

It all culminated in the Alipore police station where she was held for twelve hours in one room with Desmond in another and they were repeatedly and furiously questioned about US and UK involvement in the Free Tibetan Army: in the case of Mum she was accused of leaking highly secret military information to the UK government. Desmond's lists of charges went back to his time with the Gurkhas. He was accused of misinforming Indira Gandhi when he accompanied her to Bhutan.

As far as those of us at home were concerned: Mum had gone shopping and Des was at work. It was only at two o'clock when Mum's driver, George turned up almost in tears, "It is Maaam and Desmond, they have been taken to the thana. I have only just been allowed to come - tell Sahib I think it is bad" The phone lines went into meltdown between Lord Sinha Road, father's office, Minto Park, Desmond's flat, and Ho Chi Minh Sarani (the Yanks had their consulate there too - a municipal joke) to the British High Commission.

After a really terrifying few hours they came home both had a huge whisky and tried to explain or understand what they had done. Dad was livid with Mum, as much with worry and fear. Desmond, who had angina, looked grey. The laughs and jokes of the trip to Sikkim a few short weeks before seemed to have a heavy echo. For all any of us knew we could have been on the next flight out leaving Mum and Desmond in gaol awaiting trial. It was real and scary.

Anyone less like Mata Hari, (on the right here) would be hard to find, whilst thinking that she superbly discreet and able to extract anything form anyone with a flick of her eye and puff on her cigarette holder; the truth was she was charming, could be devastatingly attractive, was wonderful company and a great conversationalist. Major assets for any women but a femme fatale she was not.

But, and here's the thing, certain events in the 60s that she and Desmond were involved in could be viewed by those with suspicious minds as deeply murky.

Now this part of the story involves a little discretion from me. One of the characters if not still alive has children who know nothing of this so the of the remainder of this he will be simply known as the General. Also the American and English diplomats will only be known as their nicknames, microphone for the American and Mr. G for the Brit. The French don't come into this but you know their names already. And the Russians, they had their own spies and paranoia. Although an upside of all of this for my father was that he became the Eastern Bloc doctor for a couple of years. Completely of the subject, that was how I saw the Bolshoi from the front row of the stalls - twice.

Why were they thought to be spies? In Desmond's case it was not strictly true but he certainly was the go to man for information on the peoples and politics of the mountain kingdoms. Every new 'Cultural Attache' would invite him to dinner, cocktail parties etc etc with the aim of making sure their communication lines were open. The microphone went out of his way to woo Desla, even the magic US passport was dangled at one stage. The British expected rather more for considerably less, a couple of scotches and some 'papers' that he could us to travel with to see his family in the UK. MY theory, and it will never be proved one way or another was that his emotional loyalty was to the hill people and anything that could go some way to righting the terrible wrongs of the Chinese invasion of Tibet should be done. And if that meant being jolly with two of the biggest bores ever to walk the planet, then he would be and did so. In so many ways they should have listened to him rather than simply using his connections to set up whatever it was they were. i know, not from Desmond or my mother, that the American army were still training young Tibetans in guerrilla tactics as late as 1972.

This next part is hard because I am revealing the clay feet of my idol. I am sure that as you have read this you have been aware that my father appears rarely and when he does so normally in a fury. Much of what you are reading is written as I understood things then. I knew that theirs was not a happy marriage and I knew my mother adored Desmond. Because Desmond's sexual inclinations were very clear and normal to me at an early age I knew there was never any physical relationship between them and I assume my father did too. I know that from the time I was about eight they had separate rooms but as a child this does not seem odd.

When we started going to Kalimpong it was for holidays, to escape the heat and laugh with the aunties and we would all go, Mum, Dad, Janie and me. Latterly though my father would excuse himself too much work, sick patients that needed him. And then KalimpongNathu La,

This otherworldly break in the mountain chain was one of the ways it was felt most likely the Chinese would come sweeping down into India. A high ranking General had been put in charge to oversee troop deployment and prepare should the worst happen. This is not some panicked thinking by a government seeing reds under the beds. This was at the height of Vietnam, Laus, Cambodia. The whole of the near and far East could fall like dominoes to a Communist super power that made Stalinism look cosy, still does. So the General has a very important, very top secret job.

Enter my mother, Joyla, just about to become forty, unhappily married, in love with one of the queens of the East and must have felt unwanted and undesirable. She met the General, of course he knew the aunties, and that was as they say that. For a year they had a glorious physical full on affair. She acted as hostess at mess dinners. He drove all over the mountainsides in his jeep and they would return with her cheeks glowing and her eyes sparkling like black jet beads. Auntie Vicky explained. "You see dear, you have your little friend Tenzing and you go out to play. Your mother needs someone to play with too sometimes, let her have her fun. You will understand one day. " Because Auntie Vickie was wise and my auntie I accepted it. Mum had a friend.

Desla didn't. He arrived full of icy anger. They fought bitterly. Doors were slammed and it seemed all was past repair. She was going to dinner at the Mess that night and came and me kissed goodnight, always smelling of Madame Rochas or Chanel No.5. I can't remember what she was wearing but her eyes were very bright, as if she had been crying. "I think we might go home tomorrow," she said and gave me hug like always. And, like always, "Night night Dumsy, I love you." and the reply,"Not as much as I love you." And then her high heeled shoes clicking down the stairs. As I lay in the firelit bedroom I heard Desmond's door open. And I crept out of bed to listen.

There was some mumbling, and laughing and then I heard clearly, "Enjoy it now Joyla but it can't be forever. But darling I do understand." Then there was noise and I scuttled back into bed.

I suppose rationally, between them, they had managed to make themselves look suspicious. Not long after this was the interrogation day and the verdict passed along from the secret police - no more visa for sensitive areas for either of them, ever again. No Kalimpong, no Sikkim, no Bhutan. Exile from the mountains that hurt far, far more than the loss of a lover.



It was July and very, very hot. Desmond phoned and asked if we would like to go on a picnic. Lovely, we would be at Minto Park in about an hour. Should we bring anything? No, just but be prepared for a lot of walking.

 We went up in the lift to the eighth floor where we were greeted by a sign asking us to dress in the appropriate garments and shoes, these where mountaineering jackets and boots. Above us flew hundreds of prayers flags and in front of us, on the eighth floor of Minto Park, overlooking Bowanipur Cemetery) was a base camp! Two tents, a rubber ground mat, sleeping bags to sit on and a camping gas stove in the middle boiling water merrily away. Also spread around handily were a couple of bear skins in case we got cold. It was 102 outside.

He cane and gave us those wonderful bear hugs. "So Joy, if we can't go to the mountains: then they come here to us."

And on that they did. And we never once felt anything but high in the thin cold air.

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High in Thin Cold Air

Mountains and aunties

When I was growing up it was considered impolite to call close friends of your parents anything other their names, Mr or Mrs Whoever or, you called them auntie or uncle. I therefore had a myriad of aunts and uncles who were no relation whatsoever but still gave a young child a sense of extended family.


Every summer, until my mother was accused of being a spy and refused a permit, we went to the beautiful Kalimpong for three to four weeks and stayed at the Himalayan Hotel. It was run by three ladies, daughters of David Macdonald a former British Trade Agent in Gyantse, Tibet. They were what they called, "a Himalayan cocktail", a combination of Scot, Tibetan and Lepcha. They were remarkable women.
Auntie Annie, in the picture, was Annie Perry, she had married Fred and he had died sadly all too long ago. She wore, as all three did, black trousers and brightly coloured silk shirts and, always bright red nail polish. 


To arrive at the hotel after a tortuous drive up from the plains climbing to 4,500 feet and to see the building and far off Kanchenjunga and then to hear, "Hi, hi", and be met with bloody Marys for the adults and nimbu pani for me. Oh, that was such a joy and excitement.

How could anyone not feel blessed to see those mountains? They weren't always on view of course, the mist faded in and around them giving us brief expectations of what was to come and then suddenly it cleared  and from the garden, under the camellia tree we would sit and watch, entranced.

The Kalimpong years were a time of golden childhood memories. My mother took me everywhere with her and I was always more surrounded with adults than children. Although at eight I had a Tibetan boyfriend called Tenzing - he was nine and we held hands a lot. But to be child surrounded be adults means that a certain level of behaviour is expected. My second father Desmond Doig, always said, "Don't be boring darling." and I have endeavoured to follow his advice ever since. Not being boring meant not bothering the grown ups when they playing cards, discussing politics or observing that most Indian of customs - the afternoon rest.

Auntie Annie never rested but would be out in her flower garden and always available for a chat and to tell the name of the flowers or to teach some rude music hall song she remembered from her youth - 'Roll me over in the clover, roll me over, lay me down and do it again." I didn't know what it meant but I sang it with great gusto at every opportunity causing giggling embarrassment all round.

Auntie Vicky, the middle auntie, was the intellectual one. Because I was missing school she gave me lessons in the mornings, writing of course and Babu French which I still speak I suspect with a Bengali accent as she did. She remembered the extraordinary Alexandra David Neel arriving in Gyantse dressed in lama's robes and being very imperious and demanding, and then adding with a sly smile, and smelly. Auntie Vicky was 'my' auntie, Annie my mother's and the youngest sister, Vera was loved dearly by my sister.

Auntie Vera was the other port of call in the afternoons - she didn't sleep but would sit reading or writing letters. She was very fat and very pretty and gentle. Her sisters could still make her cry. She was the beloved confidant of the Queen of Bhutan and this gave her a certain grandeur. She taught me to crochet and told me of ancient scandals to do with the Bhutanese and the Sikkimese; sadly, none of which I can remember or even understood at the time. I wish I could. One winter she came down to Calcutta with Ashi Kesang, the queen and they were at performance given by the Bolshoi that I had managed to force my sister in to taking me to. (My family never understood my love of ballet) In the interval Auntie Vera beckoned us to the box and of course we went. I curtsied, my sister pinched me. But Auntie Vera was in her element, loved and beautiful in that moment. She told she had seen Anna Pavlova dance there at the New Empire when she was my age and how beautiful she had been.

And for those of you that think all this has gone, the picture above is the hotel today run by one of the aunties real nephews. What a lucky, lucky little girl I was.


http://www.himalayanhotel.biz/english/index.html